To live in two worlds
As home
Is to know
There is no leaving
No running
Away
Nothing is ever abandoned
Except maybe your sanity
In your constant transit
There is only returning
There is only coming home
Only picking yourself back up
Where you were left
Off
Only finding your last finish line
And calling it morning
Again
⠀
I am here to tell you ⠀
That your very concept of aloha will shrink in the shadow casts by this mauna ⠀
so that when you are finally forced to leave her malu ⠀
After 42 days under her protection
It will bring every one of your kūpuna to the Surface of your skin ⠀
All your lepo ⠀
And all you Kai ⠀
will all come bubbling right through you ⠀
Until you are spilling ⠀
Spilling ⠀
Spilling over ⠀
At her ankles ⠀
⠀
And if you are lucky ⠀
You have a wahine ⠀
Who will turn her palms down to your ‘āina to hold you as you weep⠀
If you are lucky ⠀
You will have a mauna ⠀
That you can watch from the rear view as ⠀
You shrink away from her ⠀
Until you are so small ⠀
That you have barely any voice left⠀
If you are lucky ⠀
Your ‘iwi will remember all the mele your father taught you⠀
So that you will still resonate ⠀
From the inside out in ⠀
⠀
If you are lucky you will remember the grace⠀
Of the last 42 uninterrupted sunrises across her skin⠀
You will know if you were ever truly a kia’i ⠀
Is was because you had the gift of being shaped in her image ⠀
⠀
If you are lucky you’ll have just enough breath to say ⠀
Mahalo piha e ku’u aloha ⠀
For all the ways you loved and reshaped me ⠀
For all the ways learning to honor and stand for you, ⠀
Saved me⠀
⠀
If you are lucky ⠀
You will get to say⠀
A Hui hou kāua ⠀
Knowing the exact weight of that phrase ⠀
⠀
Such a simple disruption
When you say home
And I am not at all sure
What that even means anymore
Such a transformation
When you realize
Your whole orientation
To aina
To self
Has changed
All in the
Shadow of a mountain
You were so recently a stranger to
And now
What aina have forgotten you
What oceans and ridgelines
No longer hold the sacred song of your name
In your absence
What of you is lost forever
In your abandonment
When you left to protect
What you couldn’t afford to lose
Did you know
That the wahi pana that raised you
Fed you
Grew you in her waters
Would have to pay the price of your forgetting
How that weight would be a debt you could never pay back
What is this trauma
Of knowing
The precarity or your own personhood
That at any moment you could become
Estranged from your self
That you might even already be so
Will you ever recover
Will you ever be ready
To face a mirror you don’t even recognize
Anymore
Keaukaha
We sit across the table
Mele about Maunakea play over the radio
and like always we begin by trading moʻolelo
then move on to trading Mahalo
For standing, for holding, for being
I am full
When he thanks me for our sacrifice
I tell uncle its such a beautiful time
to be Hawaiian
And I watch a smile skim across his face
But then the winds change
and uncle’s somber makani get caught in the back of his sail
“Yes,
I remember a time when it was hard to be Hawaiian,”
He says
And the whole ocean builds behind his eyes
And the stars he navigated across our largest oceans under come shimmering to the surface
And before the water can sweep him under
Her turns away, takes the ocean with him out the door
And I remember
Again
Again
And again
Why this fight is so important
Lay in me the valley
Between your summits
Let me be
The flow of ā connecting you
The pele that is always moving and growing
In your stillness
Lay me down here
Learning the quiet
Of a breath that isn’t rushed
Isn’t coerced
Isn’t afraid
Lay me down here
And allow me the privilege
Of being the ordinary at the feet of your magic
Lay me down here
And I will give my every voice
For the occasion that is your stoic stance
Teach me the patience that comes
From being pulled full and at once
From the depth of the sea
Because I am looking for answers
In the ways I’m supposed to be
I am looking for reasons
Not to run
From this person I’ve spent my whole life becoming
Because today I am a body full of questions
Slow moving magma making a mark I’m not so sure of
And you
you are gods reaching your ridge line into our every sky
You are answers sketching yourself into the skyline
You are every way the wind moves me entirely and
Exactly at the right time
So lay me down
Under the cover of your prayer
Watch the way I can’t help but shutter
Under your protection
We chase Kānehoalani across a promiscuous sky
Wākea is soaked in stars
Papa is wet with anticipation
So we follow the path carved by pele
between giants at out shoulders
Loa and Kea
Casting shadows of protection
We put our prayers in our feet
Wait for the pōhaku to breathe us in
And trace the pāhoehoe slowly until we arrive
He alo a he alo
with the paia that remain
the paia that remind
us how to stand
The paia left
After each and every of our ahu
Are targeted and defiled
We hold out our skin to the lepo
Show her where it hurts
Where it’ll turn to scar
Where we’ll remember
What is this security
That has us clinging to our dirt and dying
Praying for mercy
Chanting for forgiveness
Here
In the piko of Hawaii
The piko of the Pakipika
The piko of our ea
We are Standing at the foot of pele’s flow
Surrounded by the wahine who call the wind
And when we set the ceremony
The elements always answer
Saying
‘Ae. ‘Ae. ‘Ae.
We are still here
Kūpuna insist
“Keep calling us by name”
And I do. And I do. And we do.
⠀
Malo says ⠀
Land without kanaka is moku ⠀
Solid surface severing the sea ⠀
And I didn’t quite understand ⠀
How Kānaka can make ‘āina of pōhaku ⠀
Until I found all that I needed to feed me ⠀
In the sincere stare of your eyes
Or the soft creases of your palms ⠀
As we pulled the dawn out of the freezing night ⠀
⠀
Nawahi says ⠀
Aloha ‘āina ⠀
Is a magnetic force drawing kanaka to ‘āina ⠀
To self governance ⠀
To eachother ⠀
And I can’t help but recall ⠀
The way we made steel guards out of our bodies for our love ⠀
How we made aloha ⠀
Out of this commitment ⠀
How the mauna became a magnet for us all ⠀
And so much more still ⠀
in her Majesty ⠀
⠀
And then there is me ⠀
Two centuries past the genius of these ⠀
Kanaka intellectuals turned prophets ⠀
And I am wondering ⠀
What mo’olelo will I write to honor the kia’i in your bones ⠀
What collection of metaphors ⠀
Will celebrate ⠀
Your mo’olelo
The way ⠀
You teach us all how to feed and be fed ⠀
What mele will I sing to hanohano your grace ⠀
⠀
Pukui tells me that to honor is to mālama⠀
And I think of all the alters of care I could build at your feet⠀
All the pōhaku I would gather ⠀
from the corners of our pae ‘āina ⠀
and stack in your name ⠀
⠀
And there are so many songs I could sing ⠀
So many melodies that come to heart ⠀
Too many to settle on one ⠀
All I know is ⠀
‘O oe no ka’u I upu ai ...⠀
Hilo pa’a I ke aloha ... ⠀
o kou aloha ka I Hiki mai ⠀
The phrases keep falling to the tip of my tongue ⠀
And I am struck quiet by our abundance ⠀
⠀
And then when I least expect it
you come into perfect focus⠀
and Every mele I’ve spent my life etching into the somber chambers of my voice ⠀
Now has a new purpose ⠀
And for the first time in months
I take a full breath ⠀
⠀
And in my exhale I realize⠀
The only thing I need to say ⠀
Is your name⠀
⠀
What happens when you run out of words
And the lāhui is waiting
Waiting
Waiting
For what you have to say
Wanting the next metaphor to pull them back here from the corners of our pae ‘āina
How many times will you choke on your own saliva
Trying to conjure
The right combination of syllables
To articulate
A moment
Beyond your own comprehension
To call your people in close
Home
Say this:
Every morning
The mauna reminds me of my human
Reminds me of all the ways my every small breath is a revolution
Reminds me how to stand like a pillar holding
Holding
Holding something sacred
Reminds me of what I must be willing to cast from my shoulders
For the ones I love and haven’t met yet
And then maybe the words will come back
Maybe they’ll write themselves into your love’s spine like ridge lines
Maybe you’ll find a poem behind her breath
You can pass off in your own voice
Maybe no one will notice today all the ways you dress your mediocrity in song
Maybe if they do, you’ll still be forgiven
And if that is so
In the break of silence between stanzas
Conjure yourself the ea you need to sing the sacred songs of healing
Forgive yourself for the ways
Your overflow
Means
Something is always spilling out from you
Even when you are not ready
Forgive the purge
The flood
The way loving
The way you seem to do
Sometimes feels like a loss
Let yourself lean in
And then Let her hold you
And Watch the way she feeds you language
One seed at a time
Watch how her eyes
Say the prayers
That bring back all your water
And words
From wherever they’ve abandoned you
So that the next time the lāhui asks for a poem
You can say:
There is a woman who’s love dances in the valleys between two great mountains
and once
I watched her pull the sun from the horizon with just her voice
Then
I caught the summit of our mauna in deepest part of her breath
So that When she held me close
I breathed every bit of that mauna in
Until
She were both pillars holding up the sky
In our sacredness
